"Life Is Not What One Lived, But What One Remembers And How One Remembers It In Order To Recount It."The

Adani's tax haven ties to British Virgin Islands revealed

An investigation by the ABC's Four Corners program uncovers previously unknown tax haven ties for Adani Group's Australian operations.

An investigation by the ABC's Four Corners program uncovers previously unknown tax haven ties for Adani Group's Australian operations, with key assets ultimately owned in the British Virgin Islands.

Alice Munro: “The Bear Came over the Mountain” : The New Yorker

The Empire of ancient Ghana The empire of ancient Ghana created by the Mende (Soninke) with human habitation dating back to at least around 4,000 BC.

Ancient Ghana was located in what is now southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. Today the area around Dar Tichitt in southern Mauritania has been the subject of much archaeological attention, revealing successive layers of settlement near what still were small lakes as late as 1200 BCE. At this time people there built circular compounds, 60-100 feet in diameter, near the beaches of the lakes. (‘Compound’ is the name given to a housing type, still common today, in which several members of related families share space within a wall.) These compounds were arranged into large villages located about 12 miles from each other. Inhabitants fished, herded cattle and planted some millet, which they stored in pottery vessels. This was the last era of reasonable moisture in this part of the Sahara. By 1000 BCE the villages, still made up of compounds, had been relocated to hilltop positions, and were walled. Cattle were still herded, more millet was grown, but there were no more lakes for fishing. From 700-300 BCE the villages decreased in size and farming was reduced at the expense of pastoralism.

Architecturally, the villages of Dar Tichitt resemble those of the modern northern Mande (Soninke), who live in the savanna 300-400 miles to the south. These ancient villagers were not only farmers, but were engaged in trade connected with the salt and copper mines which developed to the north. Horse drawn vehicles passed through the Tichitt valley, bringing trading opportunities, ideas, and opening up the inhabitants to raids from their more nomadic northern neighbors. Development of the social and political organization necessary to handle commerce and defense must have been a factor in the subsequent development of Ghana, the first great Sudanic empire, in this part of West Africa.

It is very plausible to think that the people of antiquity in Ancient Ghana may be connected to the Ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it turned into dessert. Additionally Habitation of the region where the Ghana empire existed is much older than Western academics are aware of.

One of the most significant intellectual errors educated persons make is in underestimating the fallibility of science. The very best scientific theories containing our soundest, most reliable knowledge are certain to be superseded, recategorized from “right” to “wrong”; they are, as physicist ...

"The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. .... The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away. ... Fear prophets, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. ... Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. ..."

Umberto Eco, 'The Name of the Rose', Vintage Books, London, 2004.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYa3_Ph7nHc)

Representation in STEM: Black Women Making Their Mark in Space and Science

Today, there is an increased push for the American education system to improve their STEM programs as well as to get students to show interest in the fields. It is important to bring attention to some of the African-American females that have, and are still, paving the road for future scientists, astronauts or any STEM degree holders.

These women are just some of the many examples of African-American contributions to science. (Descriptions pertain to the women in the order they appear on the photoset, from up down, left right)

Mercedes Richards PH.D is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Originally from Jamaica, Dr. Richards received her Doctoral degree at the University of Toronto. In 2010 Dr. Richards received the Fulbright Award to conduct research at the Astronomical Institute in Slovakia. research focus is on binary stars; twin stars formed at the same time.

Willie Hobbs Moore PH.D is the first African-American woman to earn a PH.D in physics in 1972. She received it at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Her thesis research involved important problems in vibrational analysis of macro molecules.

Beth Brown PH.D (1969-2008) was an Astrophysicist in the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Born in Roanoke, VA, she grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars and was fascinated with space. In 1998, Dr. Brown becoming the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in Astronomy from the University of Michigan.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein PH.D is currently a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the Observational Lab in Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. Originally from Los Angeles California Dr. Prescod-Weinstein specializes in theoretical cosmology.

Dara Norman PH.D is a professor at the University of Washington. Dr. Norman grew up in the south side of Chicago Illinois. She went to MIT as an Undergraduate and worked at NASA Goddard in Maryland. Dr. Norman currently specializes in gravitational lensing, large scale structure and quasars (quasi-stellar objects). This year she was honored with the University’s Timeless Award for her contributions and accomplishments to astronomy. In 2009 she was invited to the Star Party at the White House.

Jeanette J. Epps PH.D from Syracuse NY is a NASA astronaut. She received her PH.D in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Marylan in 2000. Dr. Epps was selected in 2009 to be one of the 14 members of the 20th NASA astronaut class. She recently graduated from Astronaut Candidate Training.

Shirley Ann Jackson PH.D is the second African-American woman to earn a PH.D in physics and the first from MIT. In 2009 Dr. Jackson was appointed to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She is currently the President of the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute.

“Atomization is advancing not only between men, but within each individual, between the spheres of his life. No fulfilment may be attached to work, which would otherwise lose its functional modesty in the totality of purposes, no spark of reflection is allowed to fall into leisure time, since it might otherwise leap across to the workaday world and set it on fire. While in their structure work and amusement are becoming increasingly alike, they are at the same time being divided ever more rigorously by invisible demarcation lines. Joy and mind have been expelled equally from both. In each, blank-faced seriousness and pseudo-activity hold sway.”

— Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 84

We men are deplorable, dependent creatures. But compared with these women, every one of us is king, for he stands more or less on his own two feet, not constantly waiting for something outside of himself to cling to. They, however, always wait for someone to come along who will use them as he sees fit. If this does not happen, they simply fall to pieces.

-Albert Einstein

The fact the Einstein was a raging misogynist kind of makes sense, given that it is widely speculated his first wife made significant contributions to the Theory of Relativity, but was completely unacknowledged (especially after he left her for his cousin).

There is more and more evidence that Mileva Einstein-Maric (Einstein’s first wife) is the coauthor of “The Theory of Relativity.”  Recently published letters between Mileva Maric and Albert Einstein are shedding light on who is the author(s) of the “Theory of Relativity.”  Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921: he gave all the money from the Nobel Prize to his ex-wife - Mileva Maric- this was the condition for the divorce settlement.  Einstein did not leave any documents which acknowledged the contribution of Mileva Maric to the Theory of Relativity. 

In 1905, several articles bearing the name of Albert Einstein appeared in the Annalen der Physik - a Germans Physics Journal where the Theory of Relativity was published.  The paper dealing with relativity was entitled Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper.  Only Albert Einstein’s name appeared in the journal as author.  According to Abram Fedorovich Joffe, the original paper was signed “Einstein-Marity.”  ”Marity” is a variant of the Serbian “Maric”, Mileva’s maiden name.  Mileva Maric Einstein’s name was left out when publication of the article took place, but Joffe saw the original 1905 manuscript.

- The Tesla Society

"How happy I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a victorious conclusion."

A young Albert Einstein wrote these words to his first wife, Mileva, shortly before publishing the Theory of Relativity. The release of letters like this one has scholars arguing over Mileva’s contribution to relativity. They met at Zurich’s prestigious Swiss Polytechnic School: Mileva was the only woman in the class, and only the fifth in the school’s history. The daughter of a wealthy Serbian family, Mileva excelled at physics and math, and was devoted to her studies until she met Albert Einstein. The two brilliant scientists fell in love. They lived and worked together. But more interested in their own work than their classes, both failed their final exams. Einstein passed on a second attempt. Unmarried and pregnant, Mileva failed hers again. Einstein never met his daughter… and no one is sure what happened to the baby. Einstein and Mileva later married and had two sons. Mileva focused her energies on Albert’s career. Some scholars believe Mileva did the math for the Theory of Relativity, others say she corrected Einstein’s math, and still others claim she was even more deeply involved. The paper outlining the theory is signed with a hyphenated name Einstein-Marty, the Hungarian form of her maiden name Maric.

Before the work was published, Albert Einstein left his wife and two sons. He never acknowledged his first wife or her work.

He did, however, give Mileva all of the Nobel Prize money. But, the money didn’t last long: Mileva was sick, and caring for their mentally ill (schizophrenic) son. Einstein went on to great acclaim, but he never again produced physics equal to the work he did while married to his first wife and collaborator, Mileva Maric.

-Women in Science

(via witheringwhiteskies)